I have 1.5 TB available in the cloud, yet not enough space on my MacBook to update software! If everything on the device is on the cloud, why must everything on the cloud also be on the device? Help!

Meanwhile, files and screenshots I have moved from my desktop into folders keep reappearing on my desktop.

I move them to the trash, empty the trash, and after awhile they reappear on my desktop, even as they remain in the folders. Many of these, when I look at these desktop apparitions in a finder file view, are a fraction of the size they are in the folders. I throw them away again, re-empty the trash, and after awhile, back they come like a bad '70s TV series effect.

And to top it all off, I get these little alerts every other time I wake the MacBook with an exclamation point and a Mac face saying, "The item '(folder name)' couldn't be downloaded. Please check your internet connection, then try again."

Why on earth is it downloading folders I haven't opened in months at a time when the HD is already chock-full?

(These folders were initially created on my desktop iMac, and it was never my intention to download the entire contents of that computer [with its larger hard drive and older, more esoteric stuff] onto this MacBook, just to do normal tasks while accessing some and adding to some as needed.)

As I've not gotten any replies in well over an hour, maybe I should sharpen my question/goal to see if I can get an answer:

I don't want to select 10-15 GB of files I want to compress or offload, I'd rather do the opposite, have all of it in the cloud and only download those things I click to open or drag something into. The fact that it seems to be downloading random files every time I turn it on, isn't there a way to turn that process around and set it up to NOT download any files or folders unless prompted?

In Recommendations > Store in iCloud, both "Desktop and Documents" and "Photos" are checked.

It says there:

"Store all files, photos, and messages in iCloud and save space on this Mac automatically when it's needed."

So what I'm looking to have it do is something it's supposed to be doing, and seems to be set up to do, yet is not doing.

When I click "Store in iCloud" again below that, it goes away momentarily as if it's going to do something about it, then another little yellow-sign exclamation point alert comes on, reading "iCloud Photo Library is already turned on./OK"

So I click OK, and it basically doesn't do anything further.

What about the "Desktop and Documents" part of the equation?

Hi, thanks for your replies. I'm running Monterey, so that's not what comes up under my System Preferences. In System Preferences/Apple ID/iCloud, Photos is checked.

In About This Mac/Storage, Documents is green, I don't know if that's got anything to do with that.

At one point, there was a big blue section there for iCloud, which blew my mind that iCloud was counting against the storage on this device? I thought the whole point of it was to do the opposite.

But now there's no iCloud section there, yet basically the same used space overall, with the biggest by far (almost 2/3) being Documents.

I would be fine with relegating everything in the Photos app to the cloud and just not opening the Photos app on this device. I don't think I've added to it since this MacBook became my primary (if temporary) device a couple months ago.

Under Apple ID, it has an option "Optimize Mac Storage" which is checked. That option says, "The full contents of iCloud Drive will be stored on this Mac if you have enough space. Older Documents will be stored only in iCloud when space is needed."

Yet that's the whole point. I don't have enough space.

(In addition to what I mentioned, I've been getting messages telling me I'm using all my App memory or something like that, and it prompts me to close apps—including Finder and Safari).

How do I get that "Older Documents will be stored only in iCloud when space is needed" to kick in?

I followed the instructions at one of those links and Get Info on the Photo Library that I find there shows it as 12.9 MB on disk. The Music Library says it's 90.3 MB on disk. Is that possible?

When I show the Status bar in the iTunes app it says I have 15,457 songs at 175.36 GB. That's 40% more than the whole HD on this MacBook Air.

That would seem to suggest these two types of files are already anchored in the cloud and these icons just representing portals to it, not storage on this device.

And I don't have TV and Movie libraries.

I did delete the cookies and cache, thanks for the reminder, I do that from time to time.

I don't have an external HD, and I don't know how I'd go about segregating my documents, I guess it's something I'd figure out if I absolutely had to, but I keep coming back to "Older Documents will be stored only in iCloud when space is needed."

That's really what I need here, is just for that to kick in. That's a feature I'm depending on, and it expressly states that's the way it's designed.

There must be an article somewhere that addresses how to get that to kick in, or how much "Older" the documents have to be before the MacBook HD will let them revert to cloud status and free up HD space—like a week? A month? Six months?

Why isn't the Software Update automatically adjusting the governor so as to free up the requisite space it's telling me it needs? That's what it says it's supposed to do.